The investigator has developed a measure of sex role acquisition for young children that assesses the degree to which the child's preferences for various activities and roles adhere to either cultural sex role stereotypes or the child's own conceptions of what is sex-appropriate behavior. The sex and age of the child, cognitive level, and the sex of the experimenter were found to affect children's sex role preference scores, and boys and girls differed in their application of sex role standards to adult vs. child behavior. Girls adhered more to their own conceptions of what was sex-appropriate than to sex role stereotypes when considering children's play activities, but adhered to the stereotyped feminine role when considering adult activities and roles.